Death Wish (1974)

Perfectly adorable

Better Late Then Never

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

To think that Ama$on is still charging $2.99 to view this mess is a laugh riot. One of the most cornball movies you will ever have the misfortune to see. Two of the three writers didn't even want their names displayed, and one was the director. Too much. And the music was by Herbie Hancock - are you kidding me? This is truly bad "jazz" as well as a truly bad soundtrack. But hey, it's your time and hopefully not your money, so, be my guest.

A perfect role for Charles Bronson. And an excellent Vincent Gardenia, in the role of Frank Ochoa, who made me think of Inspector Javert of the "Les Miserables". A very young and persuasive Jeff Goldblum in a role of rapist, one of the three at the beginning of the film. All the other actors-robbers are convincing. I've seen the movie several times at long intervals. Every time I liked it. Because it is well done and resists the proof of time. The scene of the cemetery in the wintertime reminded me of the time when I visited the tomb of the director, Michael Winner, in London. Herbie Hancock signs good music, close to the Lalo Schifrin style. Hope Lange, in the small role of the wife, was very good.

Kicks ass and takes no prisoners, that best sums Death Wish..., indeed there were a few sequels that followed the original in later years, but none of them were as raw and shocking as this first one.Charles Bronson was never the greatest actor, rather stoic in his approach he came across as unloving and didn't possess much emotion, hence why he was the perfect fit for the character of Paul Kersey, otherwise known as the vigilante killer!The idea behind Death Wish was sound, who doesn't want to watch scumbags and general low-lives get their comeuppance? And that is basically what Death Wish is, a guy who's wife is senselessly murdered by a trio of thugs ends up heartbroken and mentally damaged by his loss, this leads to the guy going out on a killing spree, looking for the right kind of scumbag in the right kind of place and leading them to their death. What struck me as odd was how lax the police were in finding the killer, it felt like I was watching a superhero film where the hero always seems to evade the law and everyone else, how Charles Bronson's Paul lasted so long without being caught was just a tad fantastical, in reality the police would've done better and Paul would've slipped up at some point. Death Wish was also a shining example of the changing times, seedy and dreary, and a tad erotic too..., e.g. a woman at one stage shows her bear breasts for all to see, it goes into disgusting detail when the two ladies are being assaulted by the thugs, and I believe one of them may have been raped; the murders also were overly detailed and shown in all their vile glory......Alas the film Death Wish was released in 1974, only ten years prior though this kind of film would've been outlawed by the strict rules imposed on Hollywood at the time, how times change indeed, Death Wish was released well after the New Hollywood era has emerged and explicitly demonstrated how much freedom there now was in Hollywood. Not an overly amazing film but definitely a landmark film of sorts, a perfect example of what a certain era in cinema history was like, in this case the 1970's and the New Hollywood era.

It seems the sequels to the original "Death Wish" appear with some regularity on cable channels in my area, so I've been catching them out of order every now and then. However it occurred to me I never reviewed the picture that started it all, having seen it when it first came out and not again till the other day.Given the circumstances of how Paul Kersey's wife was murdered and his daughter left a catatonic invalid, the response we get in this story is almost mild by comparison to the over the top violence we see in movies today, including the sequels spawned by this film which started up eight years later. I don't know if this was the revenge film that initiated the genre, though it has a pretty good claim to the title.It's interesting to note the advance in technology from the mid-Seventies to today by way of that scene where Frank Ochoa's (Vincent Gardenia) partner ran around looking for an available phone booth to call Kersey's apartment and got frustrated to find one where the line had been cut. I'm curious how younger viewers of today process that scene, when even a kid can make a call on a cell phone. How primitive the Seventies must have been. In case you didn't keep count, Paul Kersey gunned down a total of ten muggers in the picture, missing one and getting shot himself on his final outing. By then it wasn't a surprise that Ochoa would offer him a way out of the headlines if he accepted a deal to get out of town. However there was an element of closure lacking regarding the three hoods who opened the picture with the attack on Kersey's family; he never ran across them to get the vengeance he was seeking. Speaking of which, and I know all actors have to get their start somewhere, but what a way for a young actor like Jeff Goldblum to catch a break by landing a role in his very first picture as a slimy street thug.